


Old Habits Die Hard

by bisexualamy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (mostly), Domestic, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Money, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 11:55:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9122437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualamy/pseuds/bisexualamy
Summary: Sometimes growing up poor is something a person can't unlearn (or, five Depression-era habits that Steve can't let go of).





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Uma for your sweet gift and for being awesome in general. I hope you enjoy this <3

It took Sam four months of dating to realize that Steve had holes in his socks.  Granted, they’d only been living together for one of those months, but Steve had been practically staying over every night since the start, and Sam liked to think of himself as a pretty observant guy.  He’d walked into their bedroom while Steve was taking a shower, and saw Steve’s clothes clearly laid out on the bed, socks and all.  At first, he didn’t think anything of the neat pile (folded perfectly to Army standard), but as he went to move it to look for his misplaced cell phone, he noticed it.  There, on the back ankle of both socks, was a hole as big as a quarter, the fabric rubbed away from use.  Shocked, Sam actually poked his finger through the hole to make sure he wasn’t seeing things, and when he found out that yes, indeed, Steve was laying out socks with holes, he went to investigate further.

When Steve got out of the shower, he saw Sam looking through his sock drawer.

“Did you lose something?” Steve asked, his tone lighthearted and his smile to match.

“Do you know that all of your socks have holes in them?” Sam asked.  Steve looked back at him with surprise.

“Yeah,” he replied.  “What’s it to you?  They still get the job done.”

“You know you can… buy more socks, right?” Sam asked.  “There’s a department store a few blocks away.  They sell packs of ten for like, a few bucks.”

“Why would I buy new socks when I have perfectly fine socks here?” he asked.  He gestured to the drawer Sam had been looking through with one hand, the other keeping his towel around his waist.

“Doesn’t it hurt when you walk?” Sam asked.  “Don’t the backs of your ankles get blisters from rubbing against your shoes?”

“My feet are callused anyway,” Steve said with an apathetic shrug.  “There was a time when I could barely afford shoes, let alone socks.  I’m used to a few blisters.”

Sam stopped, taking a step away from the sock drawer as Steve went to close it.  He regarded his boyfriend with an additional note of understanding before saying, “still, now you can spare the few dollars it takes to buy socks that aren’t worn out.”

“Sure, I _guess,”_ Steve said, “but why do that when I could spend the money on something more worth it?  Something more worth the dollar always comes along.”  He smiled, then went over and put his free arm around Sam’s waist, pulling him in tightly.  “Like you.  You came along, and I’d much rather put that money towards something nice for you.”

He kissed Sam’s cheek, and chuckled and elbowed him away.

“Get dressed,” Sam said.  “Our dinner reservations are soon.  And have you seen my cell phone?”

He walked into the next room to keep looking while Steve put his clothes on.  The next day, when Steve opened his sock drawer, he saw two new packages of socks sitting next to the ones he’d already worn out, with a note from Sam.

_I know you’d never get these for yourself, so consider them a present. <3, Sam _

***

At first, Sam thought it was just the super soldier serum that made Steve eat enough food to feed a small army.  And, in part, that was true.  Steve regularly helped himself to second and third rounds of food, and still looked to be in the best shape of his life.  “It must take a lot to keep that body running,” Sam would frequently joke, and Steve would just look at him, mouth full of food, and smile close-lipped.

However, soon Sam noticed that Steve didn’t let _anything_ go to waste, least of all food.  Everything he bought had to have three separate purposes, or be used down to the last drop before he begrudgingly threw them away.  Shampoo bottles were squeezed for every bit of product, disposable razor heads were used until the dull blades cut more skin than hair, and food was never left on the plate.

Sam didn’t bring up how Steve diligently cleaned his plate, or drained his water bottles, or ate every bit out of chip bags or granola bar wrappers, because he knew that it would make his boyfriend feel strange.  Not strange in the way that he didn’t fully know what he was doing; Sam was convinced Steve was very aware of his habits.  No, more strange in the fact that Steve still felt a bit like a fish out of water in the 21st century, and almost like having to fully face that the Depression, and later the strict war rations, were over, he’d lose all tangible connection to the past he so valued.

Besides, Sam still felt a bit honored when Steve asked for a third helping of the meals he liked to cook for him.

***

Sam soon learned that if he wanted to go grocery shopping in a reasonable amount of time, he couldn’t bring Steve along.

“What kind of price is this for a pound of apples?” Steve said, trying and failing to keep his voice low enough as to not attract attention.

“A pretty decent one,” Sam said, tying a knot in the plastic grocery bag holding his apples and putting it in his shopping cart.

“But that’s ridiculous!” Steve said, following Sam as he began to walk towards the vegetables.  “Back when I made runs to the grocery store for my mom, you could get five pounds of apples for that price!”

“Amazingly, inflation has picked up over the last seventy years,” Sam said, his voice dry but his smile giving away his sarcasm.  “Things aren’t going to be priced like they were in the forties.”

“I know _that,”_ Steve sad, “but that doesn’t mean they can charge an arm and a leg for- you’ve got to be kidding me!”

Before Sam knew was was going on, Steve was five steps in front of him, standing in front of the deli counter looking at the prices of meats and cheeses.

“What kind of price is $9/lb for sliced turkey?” he asked incredulously.  “I used to be able to get a _whole_ turkey for nine dollars!”

The college student behind the counter looked a little taken aback by Captain America standing so close to him, demanding to know what kind of injustice could’ve taken place for someone to charge nine dollars for so little turkey, when Sam came over to take Steve’s arm.

“You keep this up, and you’re going to cause a scene,” Sam muttered.

“People just have to know how to stretch their dollar better,” Steve said.  “If they learned how to shop properly, then food companies couldn’t charge so much for their products.  I used to be able to get a week’s worth of groceries for ten dollars, and you know what?  It’s a shame I can’t do that anymore.”

“You know that ten dollars is worth about ten times as much now, right?” Sam asked.  “Ten dollars worth of groceries is equivalent to about $100 worth now.”

Steve shrugged and said, “I guess, but ten dollars sounds a whole lot better.  We might not have had much back in the forties, but at least our price tags were in cents and not dollars.”

***

There was something about dating another veteran that was both comforting, and at times unsettling for Sam.  He wouldn’t trade his relationship with Steve for the world, and he took the man, ghosts and all, as Steve took him, but something about walking into his bedroom and seeing the clothes in the drawers next to his folded to the exact same specifications brought back the feelings of anxiety that he was usually very good at ignoring.

Their bathroom was more meticulous than it needed to be, their kitchen never had dirty dishes in the sink, and sometimes, Sam struggled to find a single aspect of the house out of place.  They jumped at the same noises, their reflexes were uncannily similar, and they took their breaths in the same measured way: just loud enough to know you’re alive, and just quiet enough to make sure that no one else can tell.

There were countless times when he appreciated it, like how Steve never questioned how his eyes habitually scanned every new environment they entered, or never commented on how seemingly inconsequential sounds or words would make him cringe.  Instead, Steve would put his arm around his boyfriend, or take his hand, as if to say, _hey, man, it’s fine.  I get like this too._

They took turns having nightmares, almost like they were on a schedule.  If Sam wasn’t shaking about Riley falling out the sky, then Steve was tossing and turning about how many times he’d lost Bucky.  He didn’t remember a single time when they’d had a nightmare in tandem, like the universe wasn’t going to be that cruel to two of her sons who’d seen horrors they didn’t deserve to witness.  Whenever one would have a nightmare, the other would gently shake them awake, take the other in their arms, and stroke their hair or rub their back, trying to bring calm to their mind.  Sam could spend years studying all about how PTSD worked, about what it does to the chemicals in the brain and how that affects the body, but all that knowledge meant nothing to him when he was swearing to Steve that this time, he was this close to saving Riley, and still couldn’t do it.  And Steve lets him talk through everything he needs to say, just like Sam does the same thing for him, until their bodies replace the adrenaline with fatigue, and they drift back to sleep.

***

Sam once heard that chivalry was dead, but apparently, Steve never got that memo.  The first time he saw Steve rush to get a door for him, or call a waitress ma’am with no hint of sarcasm or ill intent, or speak in a way that was just a bit too reminiscent of the movies Sam’s grandmother used to put on for him as a kid, Sam felt a warmth inside him he couldn’t describe.  Something about having that kind of gentleman dote on him was something that, for years, he could only imagine as an aspect in some childhood dream.

There was slang that Steve still had in his vocabulary that Sam insisted hadn’t been in the American vernacular for decades, but that didn’t stop Steve from keeping the words alive, all the while insisting that there wasn’t a word today that had quite the same ring.  After a few months, Sam heard himself using phrases that he didn’t know the meaning of before he met Steve, and there was a comfort in knowing that the two of them had been together for long enough to pick up on each other’s speech.

He loved when Steve woke up in the morning and grabbed his waist and kissed his cheek while he was at the stove.  His heart never stopped fluttering when he Steve offered him his arm when they walked into events or restaurants.  And sure, sometimes the fact that his boyfriend was a little old fashioned could get to be a bit much, like when Sam kept insisting that he could get his own car door and Steve said that his mother taught him to treat people right, but any annoyance was typically masked by the disbelief he felt over and over that he’d found such a wonderful guy.  After all, he’d always pictured what it would be like to have a real gentleman sweep him off his feet, and now, he no longer had to wonder.


End file.
